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Shining My Light Forward – Join ME in The FUN

Montana Lighthouse – Going To The Sun – Yes!

When Covid hit I had just completed my Master Facilitator training with Koelle Institute. I was ready to launch a pilot leadership development program in the Seattle area, bringing the horses into the program. I also had just offered a day event, From The Barn to The Boardroom – right here in the Valley for Flathead Leadership and was excited about the potential for more. In other words, my light was focused on Equus.

Covid bought my Equus Coaching and the Leadership development program to a halt! Really, Covid sort of bought most everything to a halt.

I did though continue to be able to get out to the pasture and actually found the time with the horses quite helpful for my well being.

The Birth of Lighthouse Coaching

I started focusing more on my coaching practice, defining Lighthouse Coaching and Lighthouse Leadership Coaching. Thrive!, CrisMarie and I, made the shift to supporting leaders navigating remote working, greater uncertainty, outrage and fury of longstanding issues of social injustice and the added challenge of finding a new normal that still is a long ways off.

Our work, finding the beauty in conflict, is really key to supporting people in dealing with the uncertainty of these times and the clear need for change. We really don’t want to go back to ‘normal’ and since the new normal hasn’t been defined or created yet, we have an incrediable opportunity if we can stay presence and be fully engaged in what comes next!

One surprise I found during these many months is how much I have enjoyed re-building my coaching practice – personal, couples and executive coaching – through being a lighthouse.

I think in many ways, right now we all are being called to be a lighthouse. To be able ground, reach out and shine as we navigate through these waters.

Sounding Board and More

I love being a sounding board and a non-judgemental or agenda-free advisor to executuive leaders who are smart, focused and sometimes just need straight feedback and a reality check to align their business, leadership and life in an authentic and effective way that can lead us into a new business paradigm that is collorborative and resilient.

I also love working with people who simply want to make a change and see the need for a coach or a lighthouse to support them in getting unstuck, bringing more of themselves to there career, their relationship and living their best life even with a pandemic.

I figured at some point I’d bring the horses back into the mix. However, I am not quite sure when that is going to be possible.

So I have decided to focus on building Lighthouse Coaching and looking out into 2021 when I believe I can more comfortably schedule and ensure that the timing is better for bringing people together.

New Definition of Community

I have realized that the way I have best built community has been in groups – in person and online, intensive experiences together. Which has been one of the reasons I think my coaching practice hasn’t been where I have placed my attention. Now I am beginning to get community isn’t simply the intensive journey together or a location. It is being connected – like many lighthouses – shining our light, message, vibrational gifts etc – out into the world as a way to create connections, build bridges and remember we are all in this planet and human journey together. It might start with me being a lighthouse for you – but I just know as we move forward you will also be a lighthouse for me!

Yes, I want to build community. More importantly, I want more human ‘lighthouses’. People grounded, embodied and shining their light. In other words, I am willing to be a lighthouse and if you are interested in being a lighthouse during these challenging times – well I hope you will join in our community!

Beauty of ConFlict in 2021

I am already designing and getting excited about The Beauty of Conflict Within, the forthcoming book and a new program. The program will be designed to support individuals diving deeply into their own process. Finding their inner lighthouse and mojo. If all goes according to my plans, this offering will be an integration of Find Your Mojo and Come Alive happening right here in Montana!

Plus the new Beauty of Conflict for Couples is coming. It started as Couples Mojo but didn’t get the needed time or attention last year! I think because I was so focused on bringing the horses into the Couples program that I wasn’t fully focusing on the amazing foundational progam we have for couples – with or without the horses. However, I sure hope that in 2021, we’ll have the luxury of both. Couples can come to Montana and have a great location to enrich thier relationship AND also discover the beauty and wonder of Montana and the horses!

Between now and proabbly the fall of 2021, I am going to be GROOTing (if you don’t know what that means – check out this blog).

Lighthouse Community Project – Join

If you really want to join in the fun of helping me build this community of lighthouses – sign up for our newsletter and Monday Mojo. Consider trying out Lighthouse Coaching or a coaching package with CrisMarie. Start a company or team book club with our book. (We’d be happy to come and do a Q&A for your team or organzation.) Invite us to speak at your organization, association or next event – virtually and if it can happen in-person! In other words – become a lighthouse wherever you are and connect!

In today’s world we need lighthouses and we need to know we are connected and are in this together!

Life Experiences

Focusing Through My Fears

We are about to launch our new thrive! website! (here’s the old one, stay tuned!) Yes, this is a project that has taken six months. (Well… may be seven).  I am also launching myself out in the world as a Martha Beck Certified Coach. Plus, there’s my summer of stepping out in the Ladies Golf League, doing and sharing my personal writing, and my latest commitment to drop my comfort foods of chips and beer (well at least for a few weeks!).

Something in me is scared!
I’m Scared!

With all the new activities and the revealing of more of myself, I find myself slightly thrilled and slightly terrified.  The website is a big deal. Because instead of simply marketing ourselves as business consultants, we are stepping out aligned with our own model of Whole Person + Whole Team = Great Results.  For us it has been a way of living but not a way of marketing.

For years now we have been business consultants who know that the best work gets done when people bring more of themselves fully to whatever it is they are doing.  We are personal and business gets done!  For years we have also been leading programs up at The Haven, for individuals and couples wishing to enrich their lives and their relationships, meaning bringing more of who they are to everything they do!  Now we are integrating our worlds in our marketing.

We know that is generally not the business model.  But we believe it is time that changes!

Of course, that can be a terrifying step to take.  What if our clients don’t agree?  What if we don’t succeed at creating a virtual presence as relational health experts?  What if people don’t like our new look and feel?  What if..? What if..?

My mind can run through lots of worse case scenarios and left to it’s own free play, I am very likely to stall and slip into despair before anyone even has a chance to say they don’t like me, us, the website or whatever.

Instead, I am trying to not let my mind run the show.  I have been practicing Focusing, a way of working with the various parts of myself.  Focusing is practice that CrisMarie uses regularly in her coaching and has been teaching me.  She hasn’t been marketing herself as a coach in Focusing because something in her is afraid. (So I am marketing her here! – Check her website out for her summer special!)

In Focusing the invitation is to realize that whatever feelings or thoughts I might be having are simply – something in me –  something in me feels scared, thrilled, afraid of failing etc…  Not all of me.  Focusing is also about allowing that something to have a voice, space, though the key lies in allowing the felt sense.  Felt sense drops me into my body not simply my mind.  Focusing is all about accepting whatever is going on, yet not getting overly identified with any one part.  So not separating or over-identifying.  It is a very powerful way of working with myself, and yet, quite simple.  The act of saying “something in me is terrified” is totally different than “I am terrified.” Try it for yourself, right now, and see how it feels inside.

In this period of lot’s of newness, I am greatly appreciating finding tools that support me in discovering new ways of working with myself, accepting myself, all of myself.  There is indeed something wonderful about stepping out of my old skin that no longer fits or feels right.  However, it isn’t easy waiting and allowing the new skin or new way to emerge.  Still, as I mentioned a part of me is thrilled to have so much happening! And a part of me is scared!  And there is even more of me that has yet to speak up and come forward — that is until now, as I simply allow and accept ALL of me!!